Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance

Preface

Preface This book presents a place-based study of free Black communities in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. The humble settlements of Rocky Fork, Miller Grove, Lick Creek, and Poke Patch highlight Underground Railroad activities using vital elements of what I term the “geography of resistance.” By using the land as a document and relying on archaeology and community and church histories, in addition to traditional Underground Railroad stories, the lives of the people forming church and community finally connected. From there I began to look for broader examples. Near the end of my research, Pamela Tilley, historiographer for the lay organization of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, assured me that Reading, Pennsylvania, had everything I was looking for. She arranged a meeting with local historian Frank Gilyard Jr., sadly, now deceased, and his dynamic wife, Mildred, who took me on a tour of their marvelous Central Pennsylvania African American Museum housed in the Old Bethel AME church. It was here in Reading that the pieces of my research came together.The town had it all: the Black church, the ever present William Paul Quinn, documented Underground Railroad escapes, iron forges, waterways and caves for hiding, a cemetery with Civil War graves—all components I had come to recognize as elements essential to how Blacks operated along the Underground Railroad as part of the geography of resistance. I was grateful that Tilley had traveled east from Texas to help me solve the last parts of a vexing puzzle. She and I spent hours talking about the importance of the AME church beyond its religious functions.We both agree that the magnitude of the influence of the denomination during the historic period of the Underground Railroad has yet to be fully appreciated. I hope this study moves the church beyond the realm of religion and catapults it to a stature equal to its historic importance for the Underground Railroad. x preface By the time of Tilley’s visit, I had been studying African American involvement in the Underground Railroad for more than ten years. I had come to understand a story quite different from the usual fare of frightened fugitives and their benevolent abolitionist accomplices. As I learned the mechanisms behind the stories, I began finding names of Black abolitionists and Underground Railroad operatives, such as New York’s Charles B. Ray, Illinois’s John Jones, and Pennsylvania’s Lewis Woodson, turning up across several states, Black organizations, and social networks. At times, they were members of the Free Masons or attended colored conventions together.They assembled at the Phoenix Society, emigration conventions, and general conferences. Many had been ministers in the rural black churches or independent denominations that animate this study. This book is divided into three parts. Part I focuses on four specific sites: Rocky Fork and Miller Grove in Illinois, Lick Creek in Indiana, and Poke Patch in Ohio. Part II defines and explores each of the components of the geography of resistance. Part III combines family stories and individual narratives with Black community and church histories and the activism of the Prince Hall Masons to place African American families inside these institutional structures. Combining history and geography fosters an expanded understanding useful for recognizing and recovering African American participation beyond sites normally associated with the Underground Railroad. Redrawing historic maps of Underground Railroad routes to include Black settlements and churches makes visible unrecognized parallel connections between free Black communities and larger better-known abolitionist centers (see map 1). Where the historical record was thin, I relied on archaeology and studied the cultural landscape. It may well come to pass that the archaeological signature of the Underground Railroad will be the footprint of the Black church rather than the underground tunnels and concealed passageways that first attracted the narrow focus of the discipline.1 Concentrating on the landscape, Black communities, and Black churches emphasizes the self-determination of free Blacks. Community and church histories bundled with well-worn narratives and brief biographical accounts tie together the lives of seemingly unrelated operators, both Black and White. Within the Black community, an alternative oral, local, and family history was handed from parent to child, from family to family, and from Black historians to the reading public. Each passed along a powerful narrative of Blacks ensuring their own liberation in the midst of constant economic, social, judicial, and educational hardships. preface xi Through this work, my understanding of the...